Former FARC leaders receive maximum sentence for thousands of kidnappings in Colombia

(AFP) Members of the leadership of the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas received on Tuesday the maximum sentence for 21,000 kidnappings in Colombia. They will be sentenced to eight years of labor, and must cooperate in searches for missing persons among other alternative sentences to jail, according to a ruling by the court arising from the peace deal.

The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) ruled that seven former rebel leaders, among them its last commander known as Timochenko, shall work for eight years in the search for missing persons and environmental recovery, amid restrictions on mobility and the obligation to carry out other activities to dignify the victims, in accordance with the stipulations of the 2016 pact that led to their disarmament and transformation into a political party.

The alternative penalties to prison were agreed in the historic agreement signed in 2016 between the FARC and the then government of Juan Manuel Santos.

The JEP found the former commanders of the so-called Secretariat of 21,396 people kidnapped before laying down their arms as victimizers.

They are guilty "as perpetrators of responsibility for war crimes, torture, cruel treatment," a magistrate told reporters in Bogota in the absence of the former rebel commanders, who had accepted their responsibility for these acts.